


Heaven for Thee Too High

by Phase7



Series: Quoting John Milton for Fun and Profit [2]
Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, Rockman | Mega Man Classic
Genre: Category "Other" because Lumine's gender obfuscation is a cornerstone of the fandom at this point, I play my shipping wall on hardmode, Lucifer's True Form, Other, Rare Pairings, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4285818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phase7/pseuds/Phase7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rock leaves the Moon for a mission with Roll, he leaves behind his two husbands and hopes they'll play nice.  They don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Solitude is sometimes best company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is set after the events of two fan comics originally posted to tumblr. Reading them isn't quite required if you can convince yourself of a world where Rock is married to both Bass and Lumine, and they all live on the moon with the Robot Masters... but reading the comics might help explain that process : First the disappearance of all the robot masters before the X series is explained without Zero killing everyone. Then Bass' war with Lumine and also clothing begins. You can [read both on AO3 right here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5985478).

Since there was always a short shuttle ride from the moon to the orbital elevator, parting couples said goodbye at the large and draughty spaceport. The hangar full of asteroids and box-laden pallets had much less air than the pressurised moon domes behind it, but it still had enough to carry sound when the airlock up front was closed. The moon was beginning to edge behind the Earth, casting long shadows from the beams and structural wires criss-crossing the transverse until they created the elongated mottle of the moon-side jungle canopy.

Roll was already waiting in the shuttle, and she had the entire trip planned. Plant Man and Wood Man walked by happily with their home made backpacks, but had to stop at the airlock doors. They looked back expectantly at the group of three still dallying at the concourse end of the hangar. The mission couldn't leave without Rock. Rock hadn't realised he was holding things up yet because he was busy doing what he'd learned to do best in the past several years: fret over his husbands.

"Be good while I'm gone," Rock admonished Bass. Bass gave a scoffing click and rolled his eyes in their plum-lined sockets. "I don't want you getting accidentally hurt."

"Tch, Rock, the strongest robot in the world doesn't get _accidentally_ hurt," Bass said with bravado. Rock shot him a moping look, complete with hunched shoulders. "But yeah, fine, I won't go out of my way."

Rock instantly brightened. "And Lumine, are you sure you can run the office without me?"

"As much as I cherish you as my assistant," Lumine said fondly, "Roll has requested you, and I am loathe to deny her the company of her own brother. That would be far more dangerous than loosing Bass in a glassworks. You're going to the old Light Labs. I regret only that I will be unable to empty out a century of detritus from the ash pit with you."

Rock laughed, remembering the fun times they'd had doing that chore in the past. Bass felt like hacking up a wet cough but decided against it. Rock's smiles had that effect when they hit him the right way. Plant man coughed politely instead. Rock turned around, and his mouth formed an apologetic O.

"I have to go now, for real. Goodbye, Bass. Goodbye, Lumine."

Rock placed a kiss on both of his husbands. Bass' was open mouthed and filled with the writhing passion of their tongues. Bass tried to hold onto Rock's waist, but the older robot drew his own hands onto Bass' strong shoulders and pushed away from longing red eyes and snapping shark teeth. Lumine accepted a closed mouth kiss, with lips slowly and tenderly quivering against one another, and their eyes closed as long as they could hold their artificial and unneeded breaths. Bass growled softly to see it, arms already crossing. Kiss complete, Rock looked over to him and giggled.

"Shh, you'll make me want to stay," he warned playfully. "I love you both! Goodbye! Goodbye, goodbye!" Rock walked backward, waving his right arm as frantically as the happiest dog's tail. At the very last moment, he turned and disappeared through the airlock with Plant and Wood Man. Within seconds, the shuttle rumbled out of the dock.

Bass dispersed his armour with a powerful swipe of his arm, then headed for the smaller single person airlock to the East. He didn't even bother to look back when saying, "Rock's not here to keep us together any more, so bye."

"I'll enjoy our time alone," Lumine said, unimpressed. The twist on the phrase's usual meaning was a cleverness aimed only at himself. Bass was halfway across the hangar, and gave only a middle finger as his response. The exchange had gone wonderfully civilly, Lumine thought.

When he reached the apex of the Jakob administrative building, Lumine found Ice and Freeze Man waiting for him as per his summons. The two ice-type robots straightened in attention. Ice took it a step farther with a salute and a tiny chirp of "Director!" Lumine nodded, pleased.

"We still have a backlog of paperwork from the reconstruction and political establishment following the terrorist attack. Because you both have experience at research facilities, and the ice samples from the Jovian drone won't be back for months, I called you in to help in Rock's absence," Lumine explained, float-walking past the pair as he bobbed in the air. The long train of his gown followed him until it had fully painted a white stripe across the deep blue carpeted room. Only then when its end had passed through the automatic doors did they close.

In this time of peace with Earth when he was not required to travel down to any diplomatic meetings on Earth, nor to engage in some woefully inappropriate and tiresome battles, Lumine found it to his taste to shed his armour. Unlike Bass, he then wore clothes like a civilised person. He drifted across the room in an elongated and silver-woven sarafan and cape like a comet's tail turned into a Russian princess. It was entirely indulgent, he knew, but Bass rushing off to mope and punch rocks in the wilderness was equally so. Thus he refused to judge himself. He took his seat in his eggshell director's throne, swivelled it around from the gigantic panes of the floor to ceiling window, and waited for the ice robots to respond.

Ice and Freeze were more than happy to help. Ice considered it his duty. Freeze was happy to do anything that Ice was doing. Both of them were still nursing a bit of chagrin from being denied yet another trip with Roll to Earth. It had been a century, and they were both very eager to measure first-hand the effect of human expansion on glaciation and cold-adapted lifeforms. Lumine allowed them to talk about their field of expertise and the long-suffering Earth-lust that called them to snowy shores where they hoped they could find the remains of their research stations. Their stories of penguins, seals, and even cryobacteria were entertaining and a welcome postponement of Lumine's own problems. While they digitised files and tossed the paper copies down either the recycling or the furnace-energy chutes, Rock's absence was forgotten.

Miles away in the Maré Fecunditatis, Bass punched moon rocks. He could have punched the trapped asteroids back in the hangar or in one of the water trapper quarries. That was his job after all: with no one to punch or fight, his station in society was repurposed as just another quarrier like Guts and Bomb and Concrete, but without any construction qualifications. When Rock was around, he'd shirk his job in favour of pestering the older bot during off-hours. With Rock gone he didn't want to be around anyone else at the quarry. He'd just want to punch heads instead, and he couldn't put up with Rock's disappointment once one of them tattled. He didn't feel like being useful. He felt like simply feeling, losing himself in the sensation of knuckles wracking bone dry basalt. When fists became anvil strikes, the regularity set into him a heartbeat.

Fifty thousand heartbeats rang through the dark stone of the maré. Bass aimed so many of them wrong that white and black scratches broke up the back of his hand like a powdered spider web. Bass only noticed this when he stopped noticing the beautiful flash of grey on his right fourth finger. That finger's armour was crumpled. Angry and panicking, Bass skittered along the large volcanic basin, bent fingers scrabbling across rubble and pockmarked rock. When he finally found the tungsten ring, he clutched it to his chest and closed his eyes and cursed himself. The ring that had been designed to put up with his aggression was finally beaten up to the point of breaking.

Bass slunk into a cave he'd carved into the side of the giant crater long ago. Repairing the ring required high temperature welding, which required the resources of the moon colony proper. He didn't want to deal with any of them still. He pulled a big metal plate over the entrance, then settled down in the bed of Soviet space program debris he'd scavenged. His power core needed some time to replenish his tanks. He didn't need or want any time to think. He could look at his beat up hands in the sputtering light of Luna-16's repurposed electronics, or he could sleep. He stopped looking at the unbroken ring still on his left hand. He swallowed the broken one to keep it safe in his crop for later. He slept.

Shutters of night closed over the flourishing moon domes for the fourth time since Rock left. The waterfall of black hexagons chittered, and dim external safety lights turned on. The administrative tower that rose above the dull twilight moonscape shut off its lights floor by floor, trailing up the helices that blanketed the central shaft.

At the top, Lumine quit his office, letting the vast window blacken completely with the swirls of ink dropped in a glass. He was exhausted more emotionally than physically. He'd been built to run the complex himself without any help, so that was a task for which he above all others was eminently prepared. Yet he'd grown to rely on Rock's presence as a creative counterpoint to his own decisions and a bright companion to his quietest hours. The quietest of all stretched before him, and he now apprehensively greeted another night when he could spread his limbs fully over the silver silk-sheeted bed. To recharge his energy reserves without company only now seemed like the chore that it truly had always been.

Soft algae lit up the corners of the floor green, and the window at the end of the room spiralled around its Art Nuveau panes with dim ice blue earthlight. Shifting and floating as if it were borne on water, Lumine's richly embroidered robes slipped off of him onto the floor. He drew his nightgown off of the end of the bed, and as he pulled it over his head, his processor finally registered that the downy comforter had been disturbed by a large lump. Sure enough, there was a body there on the lefthand side next to the door. Bass wasn't asleep, and moon dust clung to him like pollen. Lumine quashed his surprise before it could widen his eyes.

"Lumine," Bass said roughly as a greeting.

Lumine tilted his head up and thinned his eyes characteristically. He didn't respond until he had inserted himself between the covers on his rightful side of the bed nearer the window and bookcase.

"What are you doing here? I thought you'd be weathering the night in that dismal little haunt of yours at the edge of the maré."

"It's my bed too. I'm allowed to sleep in it." Bass slipped down from the headboard to burrow actively into the sheets. His body swayed and rolled, his arms and legs claimed space, and finally his hands brought sheets and pillows alike up to his face. He sniffed it all with boorish exaggeration and pleasure.

"You've returned here to smell Rock, you naughty thing," Lumine goaded.

"You're not any better. You could sleep in your stupid big office."

"Hm. It's my bed too. I'll be using my side. Good night." Lumine turned on his side so that his front would face the window and his back would face things he didn't particularly want to see. Then he heard Bass spread out further into the centre of the bed. "Don't try to edge into Rock's area. Let's call that our buffer zone."

"Yeah I get it, you don't wanna touch me."

"You've said the same repeatedly. Don't construct a high throne to judge me from."

"It's a high horse," Bass corrected his English with a great amount of satisfaction.

"Good night, Bass."

Long hours passed in silence. Bass couldn't take it any more because he certainly couldn't sleep. Rock's smell was once again near him, and the room brought back memories of heady nights of screaming pleasure. He'd come back to the tower to relieve the stress of wandering a moon without reminders of the blue bomber, but remembering pounding Rock into the very abused mattress that cushioned his butt wasn't helping his separation melancholy.

Figuring Lumine was actually asleep, Bass rolled over, invaded Rock's centre slice of bed, and breathed deep. The smell shook his spine. It was a sweet and light cinnamon mixed with peanut oil and a set of oxidising components that only Rock made. It drove Bass crazy, and welled up the oil behind his eyes like river rapids. He could see and feel Rock clearly in the ripples of memory: Clutching to him with a vice grip the way he should, all over, even inside, especially inside— and his beautiful enormous blue eyes struggled to stay open while his perfect cock-sucking mouth was open wide and drooling a mix of oral lubricant and the leftovers of their earlier session— and he was crying out, "Bass!! Bass, I love it. I love you. Please (ah!) just a little harder..." And oh if Bass wouldn't give it to him harder in the memory as he crammed his big nose right into the sheets.

"That's almost disgusting." Lumine said into the starry blackness, body still turned on its side to face the pale blue window.

"You talk a lot for an asleep person." Bass deliberately pulled the middle pillow out from under Lumine's head and took an aggressive snort of the side that still smelled like Rock's hair oil. He then threw the pillow back, hitting the back of Lumine's still head. "Too bad you got your stink on it."

Bass waited for a snide comeback. The sleeping act continued from the earthlit side of the bed.

"Is it any worse than sniffing the hell out of him when he's here?" Bass said loudly. He was about to throw out another aggravation when Lumine spoke.

"He's not here."

"I can't do anything about that. Shit, I shoulda gone with him. Maybe I still will, and I'll leave you all alone up here how you like it."

"Myself and eighty robot masters."

"Feh. 'Old Robots' don't count as people to you. Rock told me all about you saying that."

"I've said many things which I regret," Lumine said tetchily.

Bass threw his own pillow at the other robot's head. It hit with a solid thwack.

"Stop pretending to be asleep, Broom Goblin."

Lumine quickly sat up and propelled the pillow into Bass' face with force.

"Don't call me that."

"You want me to call you 'Director' like all your favourite little servants do?"

"I do not have servants and I have no favourites other than my new 'family' —at Rock's express request— so if you would stop treating me with disrespect, I would highly appreciate that."

"Oh yeah, you have to be forced to care about any of us. You say newgens are supposed to be more full of those squishy feelings. More human, but more than human. Citation. Needed."

"And you're so considerate."

"Hey, I love Rock with all my heart, fuel pump, myself! I'm gonna fight him forever, just him and me. You say you love him too, but I think that's all you have in you. Not a centimetre more of love in any of your struts."

"Shut up." Lumine clutched at the bedsheets.

"Ohhhh, rude. What, Creepy-Face don't like hearing this?"

"What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? What do any of you want me to do?"

"Stop treating me like shit!"

"I don't!" Lumine's head snapped around, mouth pulled down and eyelids pulled open in genuine shocked displeasure. His chest puffed in and out with the carefully programmed mimicry of human distress. And he was sitting there in a carefully mimicked human dress. Just a tiny ball of a joke that would never really be a person, that's what every scientist and supervisor said.

Why'd you make it with such a creepy face? Oh, it's just a spare we found in storage; no time to build one unique because Jakob needs to start in two weeks. Red eyes use cheaper materials. We had lavender leftover from the Spring line.

Haha, is it a boy or a girl? Doesn't matter. It just has to be a construction foreman, doesn't it, with the blueprints programmed in. Post-Dev and Habilitation says it's doing well in architectural training.

Isn't it short? Why does it keep staring at us like that? Get its hair out of its face; that's not how Marketing wants it. We went public with Jakob and it's still in school? It must be dumb. Well, you know, you can't program being a human into things. Okay, who keeps putting its hair in its face? Remember, Lumine, be kind, be courteous, use the proper forms of speech with humans and Maverick Hunters. Don't stare, don't frown. Get your work done on time, be ahead of schedule, don't waste any time or resources, and keep your reports up to date. And get your hair out of your face.

It's funny when reploids really try to be human, isn't it? I mean, lots of them are great coworkers, but, you know, it's uncanny valley everywhere. Uncanny valley relationships, right? They're not really people. It's too bad we can't reprogram them like mechaniloids, or there wouldn't be the problem of what to do with the waste from melting down mavericks. Oh, come in, Lumine. You see, no one will confuse this one with a human.

This one's really, really funny, you know. It's so sweet that they gave the elevator program a face. Yeah, but shame about the face. Laughing, laughing, incessant mockery, eternal diminutives, potential smothered like a newborn baby...

"I do not try to treat you badly." Lumine's face shifted closer to neutral. Was it training, or programming, or his choice? He wouldn't ever be sure.

"You're really bad at it." Bass wrinkled up his hawkish nose. Face flat, Lumine turned back to the tinny blue light of the window. Bass made a growl in the back of his throat, then threw himself back down onto the bed. He bounced once. His growl grew lower and warbled, but he was thinking hard, and trying to do what Rock would want him too. "Okay, fine, we can truce for a few weeks, right? I'll stick to my side of the bed. And I'll shut up. I know I'm your least favourite robot."

"You're not." The reply came so quickly and clearly that Bass almost imagined he'd... imagined it.

"Who couldja hate more than the robot stealing Rock away? And winning."

"Bass..." That tone of voice was about to resignedly take the bait, but the name drifted off into the weary dark room. "I hate Axl the most."

Bass crossed his arms behind his head. This was mildly curious. "Why?"

"I won't make a story of it. I'd worked very hard on the Jakob Project. It's what I was built for, like you were built for Rock—"

"Then why don't you marry the moon and leave Rock to me?"

"Don't assume I haven't." Lumine cast a slit-eyes glance over his shoulder to punctuate the sardonic statement. "But we share Rock; that's his decision. As for Axl: I did not want a war over the moon, so when the Maverick Hunters arrived, I tried to reason with them. Then Axl shot me before I could... twice. Despicable."

"I always figured those three were the ones that jacked up your place before you went back. When you were back in time, you coulda destroyed him before he was onlined."

"Had I done so, I would not have gone back in time to meet Rock in the first place. Axl was the one who helped finally destroy my primary body to trigger the backup and whose shots misaligned my recall switches." There was a sudden rush of material when Lumine raised his hand to his neck. "Or rather, without Axl, I would not have been created. That is the logical train of thought."

"Right, so you couldn't kill him or you'd make a damn time paradox. What a drag. I woulda helped you kick his ass, broom feud or no broom feud." Considering this brought quite happily devious battle plans to Bass' head.

"No, no, it wasn't that," Lumine stammered, still shocked by his own internal revelations. "I honestly, at the time, considered Rock first. Foremost among my paradox avoidance consideration : to have met my true love."

"Oh, jeez, don't call him that," Bass said on the line of true and fake disgust.

Lumine shifted his entire body around, pivoting over his left side with the loud crinkle of his pressed cotton skirts. His eye was still slit, but it sparkled with a dangerous mirth. "To have met _your_ true love. Is that more amenable?"

"Okay, you're weirder than usual." Bass unfolded his arms from behind his head, wary.

"I love him, Bass."

"Yeah, I do too."

"Good night, Bass. I forgive you." Lumine settled down into his side of the bed, front facing Bass. His face peeked up barely over the silver lamée down comforter.

"Excuse you?"

Lumine's orange eye still twinkled. "We've all said stupid things, haven't we? I have many thing to think about tonight: I am going to sleep now."

That terrible eye closed.

Bass found it impossible to sleep. He knew he'd acted rudely toward Lumine, but that was really the comfortable extent of their relationship and to be expected from both sides. To be forgiven implied that he'd truly done something wrong, but no replay of the nights events could place any blame onto him. He felt blameless and confused. He was at least surrounded by the scent of Rock. Not that that helped with the loneliness.

His technical second husband slept like a wierdo. For all the younger robot talked of the pseudoörganic perfection of the newgen reploids, he chose to sleep like stone, with barely any movement beyond the faintest mandatory pumping of his internal systems. Bass didn't know how he himself slept, other than lightly.

There was probably more to Lumine than he knew, Bass thought. Yet he'd never felt it in himself to care. In all his years of wandering the changing earth after the disappearance of the Robot Masters, he'd only heard the word Jakob once, when he'd asked the frightened crew about the weird new tower he could see from the cargo ship he'd stowed away on. The director of a moon project was so far outside of Bass' sphere of consideration that it was laughable. So he'd never connected the two figures: the orbital elevator, and the weird future robot that had appeared in the Chronos Institute. Bass hadn't liked the lavender haired robot that infested Light Labs back then, and he really hadn't liked how Rock had taken a shine to the new lab janitor, and he'd detested the terrifying day that he realised Lumine would come after him with a broom when he tried to spar with Mega Man because the future creep liked Rock back. That's why Lumine's name would always be Broom Goblin to him.

Why did Rock have to have room in his heart for two people? Bass was supposed to be the only one. It was natural that he'd resent the other. So why did doing that have to sadden Rock so much? It wasn't supposed to be like this. And the Moon Goblin had the gall to act like he was a victim too. No.

He wouldn't go out of his way to be nasty and accuse the other of seducing Rock, mostly because Bass was certain that the eerie body and affectations (and superiority complex) of the other were absolutely incapable of seducing anything, but Bass wouldn't forgive the moon bot for letting Rock's affections grow. Not that his attempts to fight with and push Rock away ever did any good back when they first met. Inside, he knew Rock chose this, and that made it worse. But why couldn't Lumine have relinquished his hold when Bass reëmerged in the future? He could have acquiesced to the righteous holder of Rock's heart. Yeah, why didn't he give up his own happiness in the face of the victor's claim?

Numerous tiny clacking sounds woke up the tower and cleared the shade from the domes below. Morning had come too fast, and Bass hardly felt refreshed. Lumine seemed no better when he rose from his side of the bed like from a coffin. In the half-light of the waxing moon's morning, he took stock of Bass openly.

"You're not wearing my ring," Lumine commented. "I should tell Rock when he comes back."

"Hey, don't try to guilt me!" Bass pointed with his ringless right finger. "I was tearing up the lava basin and it broke off, okay? It has nothing to do with feelings."

"Where is it?"

Instead of talking, Bass made a bug eyed face and began to hack. After three spasms and one spit, the broken tungsten ring oozed into Bass' palm. He presented it. Lumine looked at it plainly, eye slowly narrowing.

"I need to get it fixed."

"You do."

"Yeah well I think Heat can handle it, so I'll head over to the smelter today and then go back to the holes." Bass exited bed, stretched to prime all of his servos, then ambled to the small bar set into the wall opposite the window. "I'm taking some E-tanks."

"And you'll do it all naked?"

"Whatchu talking about? I'm always naked at home. No one cares below either. No one cares about clothes but you and the fop squad."

"Technically Elec's cadre has more in common with the Dandy Æstheticism movement."

"Yeah, I bet Rock loves that you know that." Bass opened the fridge under the bar then put a few cans of the counter.

"He does. He also likes it when you wear clothes."

"He's not here. Let's look at the upsides." Bass nabbed one of Rock's cloth bags from the bedroom closet. He placed the broken ring back in his mouth, the cans in the bag, and the bag over his shoulder.

"I like it when you wear clothes too."

Bass looked over to Lumine, unbelieving. The other android was still sitting prim in bed in his voluminous pleats of layered cotton. Worse, he was trying to look innocent.

"Are you trying to start something this morning? Is all you're good for complaining when shit doesn't meet your standard?" Instead of waiting for an answer, Bass walked to the door.

"No, you're being unfair."

That was it. Bass turned on his heel and yelled, "He liked me first! He loved me first!"

Lumine looked away from Bass' envious accusing gaze. He rose from the bed, and made a soft hum as if replying to his own thoughts.

"Won't admit it?" Bass continued. Lumine finally looked back into the other's eyes. There was an uncomfortably direct connection between them. Then Lumine smiled with the wide slit of a smile that accompanied him knowing everything.

"I know," Lumine said.

"And: I screwed him first." Bass crossed his arms and drew his body up tall. He was sure this was the lynch-pin of his superiority, and he was sure that Lumine's face was going to fall to disbelieving pieces. Any day now. When that smile went away.

"I know that too."

"You... do?"

"I'm not an idiot, Bass." Lumine broke off their eye contact to remove his nightgown. His sticklike aubergine body poked out of the pure white folds in an uncomfortable way before he threw the cloth away and strode confidently right into Bass' personal space.

"What are you doing?" Bass backed up, feeling strangely aroused by the rarely glimpsed naked body, probably because he was just thinking of Rock's. That had to be it.

"You're standing on my day clothes." Lumine pointed down. Bass' dark head followed the line of sight down to the previous night's discarded sarafan, under-dress, cloak and belt. The cloth was dancing around his black heels in a seafoam of white and silver-lavender flecked with the bright green and blue of Lumine's favoured colour scheme. He'd assumed all the soft stuff under his feet was carpet and rug. So much for that.

"But how'd you... know?"

Lumine giggled. His smile had grown, his eyes too thin with satisfaction. "Your face made no secret about how mind-blowing your 'fight' with Quint was. You stared into the yawning vastness of indescribable and rapturously divine space for days. You worried Dr. Light, don't you remember?"

"That doesn't mean anything. For all any of you knew, I fought Quint!"

"Such a lovely euphemism. Quint is Rock from the future, correct? From a date quickly approaching, in fact. From the trajectory of your relationship, one could assume you'd marry in the future. Assessing your affect after your altercations with quint, all those fights you two got into in the sealed boss rooms, and the peculiarities of your scratch and dent injuries, it was rather obvious what you two were doing. So long as the assessors were not Dr. Light and Roll, who did not connect the evidence whatsoever." Lumine paused to gauge Bass' reaction: furious. Lumine softened, and reached out a hand toward Bass' face. "I'm glad he did what he did."

Bass slapped the slim arm away. "He told me not to tell any one! No one is supposed to know!"

"I wondered then why he slept with you. He'd come back from the future to fight himself, and his brother, and of course you since you'd never pass up a fight. But instead he slept with you. He didn't sleep with me."

"Are you mad about that?" Bass spat, ready to be disgusted by Lumine's jealousy.

"No, because you are right: he loved you first."

And then that answer took Bass completely off guard.

"He loves you, Bass," Lumine repeated. "And when he was separated from future you for a minute, all he wanted to do was go back to your arms. I can't compete with that, and I won't try to. But he loves me too, in his own way. So I don't want to fight about it with you. You came first, I came second. You had sex with him first, my first time happened a century later. Being second isn't a consolation prize to me ; I cherish it for what it is."

"But all I do is fight. I'm proud of that." Bass uncrossed his arms, tension leaving. He kept his eyes on Lumine as the naked bot sat down on the properly Bass side of the bed. Then again, Lumine's desk chair was all the way across the room.

"I only wonder why he chose to—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Bass broke in, "you were a virgin?"

"I don't think that has any importance but don't say it like it's a joke. We're all robots anyway."

"But just, the two of you..." Bass brought up his hands, made two middle fingers, then jammed them repeatedly against each other with a mad grin. "You both did it for the first time as virgins? It must've sucked! No wonder Quint came back to give me a lesson!"

"It was quite satisfactory, thank you." Lumine's smile dropped completely. He could tell he was being mocked yet again. And Bass was still doing the hand thing.

Bass slammed down on the bed butt-first to sit next to Lumine. The impact bounced the dark purple reploid once with a squeak of surprise, and before he could say anything, Bass' arm was around his back and drawing him into a vice grip hug against strong black protoform plates. Then Bass crashed them both back onto the silver comforter, side by side.

"I brag about banging him first, but..." Bass rested his left cheek against Lumine's trapped and nervous right. "You actually slept with him first in his life, after he was upgraded. And I missed seeing him brand new like that. Damn, I'm jealous. How long was it before you got him? How was it?"

"Bass, I have work to do..." Lumine's body squirmed and trembled, but Bass' arm held fast and his heavy left leg swung over to trap Lumine's lower body.

"I'm asking you about Rock. You don't have to go yet."

"You're fishing for a pornographic story while he's gone!"

"So?" It was Bass' turn to smile. Lumine stilled. Resistance was futile. "You got him first, and I'm not happy about it, but there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, you could have held off and gone to find me in the wilderness first."

"That is exactly what happened."

"No it's not, you damn liar," Bass said without condemnation. "Just tell me..." Bass stopped talking. His breath came out hot against Lumine's cheek and blew at the fall of hair there. It wasn't a seduction. It was a closeness. With lips at his chin, Lumine felt Bass' voice trembling. "What was his first time like?"

Work wouldn't start for a while today, Lumine decided. Ice and Freeze man could sleep in. The director's body relaxed. He covered Bass' hands with his own, drawing the bot's loose right hand to his hip and entwining their fingers there.

"It was wonderful. He was very, very happy." Lumine squeezed their hands to steady himself in the memory despite the whisper spinning cobwebs in his voice. "He was eager but we took it slow. And when I finally pushed in, he yelled like his little world was going to shake apart."

"Heh. It probably was. You are pretty big. Not as big as me, but..." Bass trailed off, lips settling wet and open on Lumine's chin line.

"Mmm, I know."

"What'd it feel like?" Bass' mouth trailed down to where synth-skin met neck plate.

"Wondrous. Rock is so bright, sweet, tender..."

"No, I mean, for him." Bass' leg pinning Lumine in place felt hot. The muscles twitched.

"Ah, I wouldn't know?" Lumine could feel Bass burrowing into his neck.

"Will you..." Bass paused, and his body shifted to settle more on top of the younger reploid's. He could have pinned him, but chagrin had lost the war to desire, leaving him equal to Lumine, and wanting no more than to bring their naked bodies closer, synapse to synapse. He kissed across Lumine's chest then spoke into the hollow of the slender, dark neck. "Will you show me what it felt like, for him?"

"Bass?" Unable to move, Lumine gave Bass one last chance.

"Will you do it to me like you did to him?"

Lumine guided Bass' head up to his own with strong hands at the back of the old robot's messy black hair. They kissed. Then the answer, "yes."

Lumine sat up on the bed, bending Bass over in his lap like a doll while he kissed him slowly and tenderly. To his surprise, Bass allowed it, and their lips only parted to renegotiate better ways to press together. One grey-purple hand remained in Bass' rat nest of hair while the other traced down his strong, broad back. Strong muscles shifted under his grasping touch, brimming with the dangerous potential that the black sculpted plates promised. Yet Bass yielded to every hungry grab at his curves and every long trail of palm down back and thigh where blunt fingertips dug in as if thirsty for blood. Dusky fingers faltered along tiny bits of skin near ears and breadths of alloy at buttock and thigh, delivering tiny static shocks of touch afraid of their own power and desire. Lumine was claiming Bass' body and feeling it with genuine desire, mapped with bruising strokes and fluttering promises.

Bass' body shook when hit by a high voltage sensation. Lumine's frame quivered constantly and his hips snapped like taut viol strings. They pressed so close, like beings made of meltable skin trapped in thin metal that was burning and buzzing and ready to burst. Bass held on tight and kissed hard as his mouth and tongue begged for more movement and sweet-tasting slickness. He could feel Lumine's pelvic heat pooled painfully when his right thigh rubbed into it. As encouragement, he let his own spring free. His knobby ribbed erection rubbed against Lumine's tender abdomen, announcing its presence and abilities with dripping heat. It took a bit of time for Lumine to realise what was happening.

"...This is not how I would have imagined this would go," Lumine said.

"Yeah. Me neither." Bass grabbed Lumine's crotch. The other droid's backstrut stiffened with a moan. "Let it out."

Lumine grabbed Bass' hand and forced it onto the bed, body heaving from breaths and fast blood. "That's not how it went," Lumine stated with frightening clarity.

Bass froze for a moment, then started struggling. The movement brushed their erections together, making Lumine moan, but his hold on Bass' wrists did not falter. He leant forward and spread his legs so they pinned the squirming body under him. The director was breathing with nearly pained effort.

"Shh. Calm down. Just the way I did it to him, remember." Lumine loosened his grip then linked his fingers with Bass'. Then slowly he moved their linked hands down until they were at line with their shoulders. He softly kissed Bass before letting his legs slip out of the ankle lock. His knees then pushed up on Bass, spreading the older reploid's thighs. Nuzzling against the purple-streaked neck was encouragement for the legs to wrap around his hips. Bass held out against the invitation until silky wet lips murmured against his and turned to velvet with tiny electric shocks. Bass crossed his ankles at the small of Lumine's back. He kissed back.

Their hips moved slowly, rolling and rocking in the faintest rhythm. Bass tightened his things against Lumine's waist, and Lumine made a very happy sound into their kiss. Their tongues met and tangled, careful of each other's sharp fangs but trying to map their mouths as they'd done months before. It was hard for them to keep their eyes open : pleasure fluttered their lids and finally sealed them shut. Somehow their liplock became a series of licks where they exchanged the right to taste each others lips. Licks turned into nibbling and sucking. Their hips began to grind in earnest. Lumine let his lower lip be devoured and gnawed thoroughly before loosing it and placing a tiny chaste kiss on the end of Bass' nose.

"We weren't quite this hard when kissing, you know," he teased.

"No turning back," Bass said before aiming his worshipful teeth at Lumine's earcone. Lumine shuddered and mewed, then tried his best to lap at the purple line of Bass' left cheek like a kitten.

"Then we should— one moment..."

Unhinging his right hand from Bass, Lumine's fingers slid between their hips to pump at the larger studded hardness there. Bass growled appreciatively right up t the moment Lumine's hand moved on and down. Lumine was licking and kissing his jawline, but those thin fingers were divided two-on-two and rubbing at either side of his entrance. He was a bit wet, true, but not ready for that yet, and he didn't know how to say that.

After pinching Bass' lips between his third and fourth finger a few times, Lumine rubbed right in the centre over the hole with his first knuckle. It didn't feel good to Bass, but he bit down on the inside of his cheek. Below, his entrance jumped and ruffled in a strange way. He felt a little wetter as Lumine kept petting, but then the hand was gone from his slit and the lips from his chin just as he'd convinced himself to bear with it. Curiosity twisted his brows when he looked down. Then he saw Lumine's lunette of hair going down too.

When he felt a hot tongue lick him from bottom to top, Bass wasn't sure how loud to scream ; when the plush pads of the muscle swirled around his clit, he decided the answer was "once and very loudly." Lumine's hand was back on his penis, pumping away steadily around a pattern of squeezes and teasing rubs. His stupidly big mouth was locked around Bass' mound, tongue licking licking licking while he sucked when the tension was just right. They'd done this once before, but Bass had forgotten how uncomfortably good Lumine was at it. The sense of competition riled him more than anything else.

"I bet you didn't know any of those tricks then!" Bass shouted then grit his teeth when Lumine sucked directly at his clit and pushed a thumb at that space between tip-part and shaft.

Then Lumine had the gall to look up with an innocent expression around his dick and speak into his vagina. "I am sorry. I can restrict my techniques if you'd like."

"Yeah, you do that," Bass ordered. Lumine blinked very slowly, then lowered his head back to work.

A nose was soon in between Bass' lips and rubbing the underside of his clit while that somehow even hotter plush tongue didn't stop licking. Lumine's mouth moved in kissing motions, and his tongue spent a lot of time licking all around the area and between the labia. Above, his hand moved with less skill, simply sliding up and down. Bass growled, partly out of frustration for having brought this on himself. But then, it was still good head, and Lumine just kissing his pussy was kind of cute. He could imagine how Rock would have loved it. One tightly pursed kiss took in a bit of his nub ; he twitched. Lumine began licking and nuzzling his face up Bass' cock. His thumb rubbed over the lips below. His tongue was thick and wrapping around the top of the shaft so that little slits of pink peeked out of either side of the dark-stained hardness. His mouth was wide open ; his eyes were still innocently big. The tongue licked upward slowly until it popped off like it was a little accident of miscalculation. Then, it hung out slightly, trapped between thin lips on a questioning face. Bass stared.

"May I put a finger in?" Lumine asked in a tiny voice.

Bass felt his mouth fall open. "What?! Yeah, frag, why are you asking?!"

"I've heard that's how you do it. To make sure you're loose."

"Dammit, Goblin, you..." Bass stopped when he saw the hurt look in Lumine's eyes, and the submissive scrunch of his shoulders. He was... he was fully playing this. Bass sighed, then settled back on his back. "Yeah, okay, open me up."

In thankful response, Lumine kissed the tip of Bass' cock, then the tip of his index finger poked in Bass' entrance. There it wiggled, getting a feel for the stretch and wetness, and then it began to press in. The ingress went smoothly. Lumine smiled and Bass wasn't sure if it was part of the act or a genuine sly happiness. Inside, Bass was feeling tight and embarrassingly wet while the finger moved in and out, crooking every so often.

Before speaking, Lumine gave another few licks straight up Bass' dick. "I'll need to add another. Are you ready?"

"Yeah," Bass said, wondering how this carefully paced and planned entrance level scrap was turning him on so much. His self-directed shame turned up another notch when Lumine's middle finger slipped in all too easily. The pressure made him close his eyes with a tiny frown to cover how good it felt. His hips rose. He heard Lumine hum, but thankfully that didn't turn into words or he would have throttled the Broom Goblin. Instead, the fingers picked up their pace and crooked right at where Lumine supposed his spot was. It took a few misses before he pushed in deep and found the right location. Bass gasped. He intentionally wiggled his hips. Screw feeling ashamed of this.

Before he knew it, there were three fingers pushing into him and flexing outward. Bass loved it and let himself shout every sound that wanted to come out of him when the fingers moved faster and his walls clamped down. Then they'd left and Lumine was sucking on his lips and licking between them hungrily. Bass realised that his labia had become damn near succulent in their puffy engorged state, and his clitoris was rivalling his prick for hardness. And all three just loved Lumine's mouth to hell and back. He pushed himself up, looking past his dick. Lumine's dry hand was on Bass' inner thigh, and his wet one was unseen, but the shoulder it connected to was jiggling. Lumine had stopped licking ; his eyes were closed and his mouth open and his face dusted with a thick line of pink. Tiny choking sounds came out of his throat. Jacking himself off. Yeah, what a class act, Bass thought in the moment before his partner surged forward.

Somehow instantly, Bass was pinned again. In careful succession, Lumine linked his slick right hand with Bass' left, tucked Bass' legs around his waist, then brought their dry hands together. He was smiling faintly. It was creepy as usual, but the blush across his button of a nose made it seem genuine and without malice. Lumine was looking straight at Bass, and from having his head horizontal, his forelocks no longer covered his second eye, so both were staring straight into Bass. He looked like he was in love, and that was the creepiest thing of all. Their hands were joined, Lumine was on top of him, abdomen to abdomen, and there was a sharp pinch where his penis was poking at Bass' wet and prepared entrance. God, they were really going to do this.

Bass' pussy fluttered. It was ready if he wasn't. It let out more lubrication. Lumine's smile grew and curved up. His eyes hooded slightly. He asked, "are you sure?" and Bass knew there was only one answer. He nodded, lips tight. Lumine pushed in.

Bass screamed like his world was about to fall apart. It felt amazing. His walls clamped down instinctively, and hard. Lumine pushed past it, withdrew, and pushed again. There was no stopping his hardness, and it just kept coming. It felt so much more big than it looked on the outside, and the perfect length to fill Bass without discomfort. He wondered if that was on purpose and part of that copybot bullshit, but coherent thoughts were becoming hard. Not as hard as Lumine, delicious hard, in and out. Bass' valve clamped again.

He heard himself yell again. He snarled. It sounded like himself. Lumine licked right across his mouth, then kissed him full ; his hips slowed down cruelly. Bass wanted to hate him, but he was rattling apart and moaning when Lumine squeezed his hands like a promise and then pushed in to the very perfect spot. Then the thrusting began. Over and over, Lumine aimed for his tangle of nerves and nodes, at least five times, enough times to stop counting. Then the thrusts became harsher and faster but missed the mark, focusing on just filling Bass to the brim. Their hips met, and they were making terrible wet noises, but every stroke made Bass bite his lip and squirm his head on the comforter. Being stretched felt like heaven, with every thrust bringing a soft surge of bliss. The sensation flowed in waves straight to his core and diffused to his very extremities, leaving dancing sparks of delight to jump around his neural net. He rocked his hips in time with Lumine's steady movements, encouraging him to go faster by squeezing their linked hands in a faster rhythm. Soon Lumine fell in line with Bass' lead, pushing harder and aiming directly to please. He pushed himself up on his forearms and brought his knees together at a higher angle, still not leaving Bass' valve.

The transition was a bit awkward at first, and it brought a lull to the thrusts that let Bass observe the bliss-shot face above him. The director's eyes were slits of burning coal, his wide smile ghostly. He was blushing wider now, and he blinked when he realised they were looking at each other. Bass' back bent and he tried to realign himself better to make being bent in half a bit more comfortable.

Lumine began moving again, shifting his hips forward and back from his straight backed kneeling position in a way that moved him gently in his partner but pressed hard on the top of Bass' valve. He was still looking at Bass with that face that was dangerously loving. Bass scrunched up his eyes and his passage. He felt Lumine lean forward over him, heard the bot's palms hit next the bed next to his earcones, and ever so faintly felt his hot breath above. The hips moved faster. The smooth-ridged hardness pushed with a careful twist that Bass knew Lumine couldn't have known to give rock back then. Then again, who knew. Maybe Rock's first time really was this wonderful and mind blowing and making Bass squeeze as hard as he could to feel every inch of textured hardness pushing into him and making him feel like nothing but happiness existed between his legs. Then it started to move faster.

Bass got into the swing of the new position and rode it with vigour. He could hear Lumine humming above him, and he let himself make pleased noises and growls too. He tightened his legs at the reploid's waist to keep up their rhythm, perfecting the angle. With his hips upturned, it felt like Lumine was pouring pleasure into him. It was a sweet connection, and Bass let himself sink into it and lose track of time. There was nothing for him but their linked bodies shifting in a spectacular loop of shared love.

God what a word. The loop spun faster and faster until it was at the rough and slick and damn wonderful primal screw that Bass loved. He howled happily like a wolf and heard Lumine laugh over him. He opened his eyes. Lumine's were closed, and he was happy, and Bass got an eyeful of his own erection bouncing over his abdomen while they rutted. Faster still, Lumine was banging into Bass, making strange but soft sounds on the edge of huffing and chuckling and maybe talking. His eyes and mouth were painfully tight lines. He seemed ready to burst. He was pounding so hard, and it was great for Bass, but Lumime was wet and dripping with condensation and his entire body seemed like it had already passed some saturation point into a world without pleasure and time hadn't caught up with him yet.

Then Lumine's eyes opened. Bass watched as they focused on the wall above his head in a split second, orange and bright. In the next adrenaline-slowed moment, Lumine's mouth formed into a tiny soft O, curling as a smile at the edges. His eyelashes beat down like crow's wings. His muscles tensed. His hips bucked once. A sound wound up and spilled out between the tiny glimpse of white ceramic teeth. In an instant, like waking from a dream, Bass saw Lumine's face all together bright and angelic and heard the tiny sweet noise he made. He hair was so soft. He looked...

Bass realised he was coming, and braced for the hot spill inside himself. It came on cue, three thick spurts ground into him, followed by Lumine collapsing into a shivering mass. Bass didn't quite feel like holding him in the aftermath. Luckily soon enough, Lumine kissed him and his tongue rolled over Bass' front teeth. That was a good enough recovery, so Bass took the chance to hold his partner's butt without reservation. He could feel Lumine going limp in him, then slipping out, pushing that pretty toned butt against his palms. Bass slapped it before it left his reach entirely.

Looking down from his bent legged kneel, Lumine kept the ghost of a smile when the hollows of his eyebrows rose in a tiny surprise. He tucked his lavender fringe over his right earcone, but as usual it fell back down. Bass clucked against his front teeth: that's what Lumine did when he was actually feeling sorry. On cue, Lumine apologised in his own way.

"Oh, you haven't yet." He swiped at his hair again, then noticed he was doing it, so moved his hand to Bass' cock. "Shall I?"

Bass rested his arms behind his head. "Hey, I can just cool it until you get hard again. Feels like a good day for a round two."

"I have to start work soon," Lumine said with laughable surprise, just remembering what the time was and what situation he was in. He bent down impressively quick to fit his mouth and throat around Bass. He suckled and sucked, doing tiny push-ups to help his head move up and down. Bass was highly amused.

"Go get it. Haha, or you could just do what you did to Rock back then."

Lumine popped off his dick. "We climaxed simultaneously."

"You did not." Bass grabbed the top of Lumine's head and provided pressure down. The mass of light purple didn't budge.

"We did. Don't presume me a liar." Lumine licked once. "Do you want this or not?"

"I can always beat off if you're gonna act like usual."

Lumine sighed out of his nose. The air running over his tip made Bass want to squirm. "I don't hate you, Bass. Just take it."

Without further preamble, Lumine engulfed Bass whole, licking and sucking with gusto. His mouth was so wet, and his lips and tongue so insistently soft yet strong in their movements, that Bass was soon overcome. With one hand pulling at Lumine's hair, and the other wedged in his mouth, he growled, bucked, and orgasmed. It was a pretty good one too, he thought. He had to blink himself back to normal, and still pixels floated in front of his fragmented vision. Lumine was rushing around in front of him while followed around by broken chunks like a badly encoded video file. Bass chuckled.

"You're not so bad, Moon Goblin," Bass said. He heard water running at the bar. A wet towel hit his head. He probably deserved it after hitting Lumine with two pillows, or rather he was feeling too mellow after orgasm to get angry. "Gotta go get the ring fixed now."

"Wash yourself," Lumine ordered. "I'll let you leave here naked, but not dripping with fluids."

"What if I wanna wear them proudly?"

"That's your problem, but if you leak on the carpet, someone has to clean it."

"They already have to launder the bed top. I'm gonna leave here covered in sex, and I'll tell the whole moon that I fragged you hard, and it was great," Bass goaded.

"I am glad you enjoyed it." Lumine, thoroughly wiped clean, slipped his body back into his embroidered sarafan.

"C'mon, Lumine, I'm such a dirty old robot. Get me filthy. Just frag me up."

Lumine let out what sounded to Bass like an exasperated gurgle. So he laughed. Finally he'd riled up his husband. Things were back to normal.

A giant glob of astroglide and repair nanites plopped between Bass' eyes. The white substance spread in rivulets down the contours of his face while its centre still clung to lips above by a bobbling line of spittle. Goddamn snowballed by the goddamn Moon Goblin. Lumine licked his lips primly, stood from his carefully bent over position, and casually left the room. Bass wanted to be angry and proud all at once.


	2. In loving thou dost well, in passion not.

Turbo Man didn't ask any questions about Bass' weird stains when the naked robot turned up at his workshop. He was just glad that Bass stood while he welded the broken ring back together, because the area between the dark-skinned bot's thighs was dripping with that had to be a mix of lubricant and cum, shamelessly displayed. And of course, Bass had been keeping the ring in his crop or cheek pocket, and who knew where that mouth had been recently. Turbo took the ring, turned to his cooling trough, and tried not to snicker while cleaning the metal: Bass' purple lines were more white and crusty now. He'd have to tell the rest of the shop when they came in for the second shift. Bass didn't even ask for a terribly good job repair job either, and would have snatched it back when still red hot had Turbo not stopped him. It still smarted in the best way when Bass walked out with it still glowing on his finger.

"Yo, I'm here to break stuff," Bass announced over radio when he entered the requisition quarry.

Trucker Joes were carting in new asteroids to mine while little mets hopped around happily extracting water and metals. One team held nylon cords in their tiny beaks, pulling backward on the gigantic meteor that they'd captured in a net. A trucker Joe clapped his hands and stamped his feet in a steady beat that carried through the solid mafic rock below the workers' feet. The mets pulled in time, and soon the meteor tumbled out of the pick-up truck's bed and landed right in the curved plinth the mets had carved below. The group of hauler mets jumped up and squealed on the radio in their victory. Then the pickaxes came out.

Bomb Man looked up from the mouth of his deep olivine quarry. While it's true that this was Bass' assigned workplace, no one had expected him to drop by, least of all Bomb Man. At first, he was happily surprised, and clicked his beak in greeting, but then he saw the state Bass was in.

"What's that on your face, Bass?" Bomb looked down. "All over you."

"Heh, ask Cut. He can tell you all about getting filthy in a guy's Guts."

Instantly skeeved by the mental image of the construction sector's most famous couple getting down, or in specific thinking about Cut grabbing a hold of Guts' gigantic member and opening his babbling mouth wide and letting his tongue loll out to accept a river of wrung-out thick cum— augh! —sure everyone knew it happened, but damn Bass for forcing him to think about it. Bomb looked cross and his radio transmission went up to a short-range whisper so that no mets could hear. Technically, they weren't programmed to even know what sex was, since they built tiny baby mets for their "families" when new workers were needed, but... it was the principle of the thing.

"What, you couldn't clean up after sucking yourself off?" Bomb accused.

Bass snorted, then got the most mockingly disdainful look. "I got a husband, Bomb. Don't prrrresume me—" he rolled his R in mockery of Lumine's vocabulary choices that he was parroting, "to be such a, um, screw it, don't got a fancy word for it. I banged the goblin and I banged him hard, and it was frikkin' great, and you'll all be jealous. Specially since you only got your hands, Bomb."

Bass elbowed Bomb in the gut. Bomb was not amused. "Go to the washracks. If you get the director's stuff on the rocks, we'll have to redo the cut."

Bass smirked and swung his hips while actually following orders for once. "Sure thing, Boss~ Jus'sayin' though: the director's already gotten his stuff _alll over_ the moon. He told me himself. Married the moon. Jussayin."

Bomb Man had to chase Bass into the washracks. The rest of the ten hour day, Bass worked like he was supposed to, cracking open rocks and pounding gravel. He even gave a sharp karate chop to a dull stone in front of a "baby" met to reveal the geode inside. The tiny met was overjoyed. The entire quarry was flummoxed at Bass' continued mellowness that day, but no one was complaining. It was dangerous to question the rare upswing of Bass' capriciousness.

Freeze Man hadn't expected to see Bass walking up the administrative tower's stairs. Even if he'd expected to see Bass at all that day, even at the tower, he would have pinned his money on the bot scaling the edifice's rocky skin, digging his fingers into bare stone. Instead, Bass passed Freeze and Ice on the stairs and gave the taller droid a high five. It was rather embarrassing : the two ice bots were half undressed, kissing, and Freeze had one large hand curled around Ice's perky posterior. And they'd both been thoroughly enjoying themselves and fogging up the stained glass windows of the stairwell's inter-floor annex with their laboured cold breaths when up stomped hell in a bat helmet. Without the bat helmet.

"Great use of your off-shift," Bass said, smirking.

"I-it's just our— we were on our way home—" Ice Man stammered, shuffling himself closer into Freeze's protective hold. Freeze's massive magenta brows lowered.

"Yeah, go get 'im. Where's the boss?" Bass pointed upwards hopefully.

"It's go home time, but the director said he'd work overtime. I th-think he's still in his office."

"Thanks, Ice."

Freeze and Ice watched Bass go up the gently spiralling stairs. Freeze shifted his grip on Ice so that he could support and carry the smaller bot. He pushed them out of the colour-dashed alcove and down the stairs where arrow shaped earthlight from the gothic windows led them down with white footprints.

"We'd better get home," Freeze said, "before a fight comes back down the stairs."

"You're right." Ice sighed, wiggling in Freeze's hold until he could hook his legs around the other's waist. "I'm just sad that my neat idea didn't work out."

Freeze chuckled. "Don't worry, sempai. We'll have plenty of opportunities to make love under the rose window."

"And to see the colours reflected through your head." Ice put his hand on Freeze's cheek.

"Spilling all over your white canvas of a body, naked, beautiful, painted in splashed of vivid glass..."

They kissed on and off all the way home. Tiny snowflakes fell in their wake.

Upstairs, Bass hunted Lumine. The royal blue carpeting made his footfalls laughably quiet : it was too easy to stalk a person in the personal quarters of the tower. Lower amid the hexagonal columnar basalt stepping stones, polished pegmatite causeways, gemstone guard crystals, and solid echoing gabbro halls... a sound! A tiny sigh. Lumine had a small reading room around here, tucked into a tiny turret with thin slices of moon-shorn peridot for windows. Bass crept forward, feasting on the tiny moans that were getting closer and closer. He imagined his naughty husband pleasuring himself in the sumptuous room of gold leaf and green velvet, seated upon his mighty baroque throne in sandalwood and green plush, two fingers pumping deep into his dripping pussy. The thought brought a sparkle to Bass' red eyes and a fire to his loins. No one made those kinds of noises without a little bit of sex. He peeked his head into the ever so thin archway, wild black mane hidden behind the lovingly carved angel wing column heads.

Disappointingly, Lumine was not making friends with his valve. Instead, he was stretching both arms far up to the top of his righthand bookshelf, while his prized Absolom Roché in custom gold plate gryphon carved molding and forest green velvet lay in broken legged pieces on the floor, and the lefthand bookshelf lay directly atop his crumpled body with all of its antique tomes tumbled out and wrapped in the director's diaphanous white train. Oh. Bass remembered setting up that sabotage. It was still funny as all hell, but now he felt just a bit bad about it.

Lumine spotted him in an instant. " _You,_ " he growled, pointing with malice. The dappled green light from the window glinted off of his fierce eyes, the gold-streaked spines of vintage bound books, and 1990's holographic Marvel comics covers.

Bass stepped fully into the hip-wide archway. He could barely fit through. And he wasn't sure he wanted to since he was in fact one hundred percent guilty as charged. Still, by instinct his only answer was a grin-borne "Me."

"You did this! Why. Why would you do this, Bass?"

"It seemed funny at the time. But look, I fixed your ring." Bass held up his right hand. Lumine was not in the mood to be impressed. His growl returned. "Why don't you just blow that all off of you?"

"That would ruin the room! Some of these books are older than you; the glass case is Swiss from 1820; the wallpaper itself is 1974 Etsa Behang damask. I can't. I just have to crawl out, slowly..." Lumine moaned again, pulling himself out another inch with his fingertips gripping the sacrificial antique above him. His dress was catching on something below, tugging the fabric tight. He'd probably been at it half an hour. Bass walked forward to help. "Stop! That's an 1861 Kuniyoshi _Hyakunin Isshu!_ Step on anything else, just..." Lumine let out a small whimper. His fingers slipped. "I am in pain, Bass. Please lift the bookcase."

"I might step on some—" Bass began to mock Lumine but thought better of it when he saw all hatred washed from the reploid's mournful eye and trembling arms. Still not caring about what he stepped on with his three hundred pounds of metal, ceramic, silicon, and oil, Bass walked up Lumine's tangled dress train to help. Easily he lifted the wooden shelves back to the wall, and unhooked the wires he'd installed to create this literary carnage. Lumine fell from his half-suspended position, moaning again. Bass looked down on him with the most aggravating sense of guilt. One wire had left a dark purple line across the left of Lumine's face, cutting through the lavender hair. Bass thought it was a bit pretty, matching the tiny reploid's aubergine base-plates, but the look of loss as Lumine picked up his books was... okay, also pretty.

At a businesslike pace, Lumine was stacking then ordering books by language, then title. Or perhaps author. Bass couldn't read all the languages on the covers, but Lumine was taking great pains to quickly shuffle the books around into a precise order. His dark purple fingers moved like grasshoppers between book spines, pulling down and setting up each title in quick hops. His tangled skirts dotted with books looked like cake frosting with sprinkles. Probably on St. Patrick's day, Bass thought, thanks to the green light in the tiny hole of a library. Nobody celebrated that holiday anymore, and Bass had only seen it a few times in America. It was a fading memory for humanity, but a clear night to him, written on his hard drive ...like a book. Lumine really didn't have a sense of the past beyond his boring books and dumb collectibles. Bass always thought it was the stupidest hobby for a future-obsessed reploid to have, but for a moment he got a glimpse of the feeling behind it. It was gut deep, unnameable, but he grokked Lumine's collection in that tiny green room.

"What should I do next?" Bass asked. Lumine looked up at him, and milled over the answer obviously. He stopped ordering the books.

"...I can sequentialise them later. Here, put these stacks back on the shelves." Lumine handed up one stack, still seated.

Together, they reshelved the books and comics in no particular order but size. Bass put the big hardbacks on the bottom, lined the short novels and manga up in the middle, then slipped the comics up on top of the other books. Lumine had tried to assemble all of the pieces of his destroyed baroque chair, crawling around on the floor. Finally, the chair was in a sad pile by the door, and there was one space left on the top of the bookshelf.

"What goes up here?" Bass pointed. Lumine scanned the book spines, then thought to check what books were still visibly caught in his dress. He pulled one out.

" _Kurosagi Corse Delivery Service._ Those were down in the lower K's when the shelf toppled, so I suppose they're all tangled in my skirts with the Kingdom Hearts games."

"So you got a stiff up your skirt, not a stiffie?"

Lumine's eyes widened over a surprised but amused little smile. "The joke only works in English. Let us say that," he switch to Japanese, "you may search in my layers for my keyblade." Lumine settled back on his elbows and brought up his knees. His sea of white cotton shifted, revealing yet more candy coloured books, boxes, and scandalously torn threads. Bass crawled forward like a prowling panther, picking out the lost items one by one, then throwing them to the side without a care. One tossed DS box hit the famed Swiss china case and rattled its glass. Lumine didn't even bat an eye, preferring to hood the large visible one and lock onto Bass' red ones in salacious invitation. His knees spread, tenting the fabric between them.

"What if a Nothing gets in my way?" Bass threw out a name he'd absorbed by osmosis incorrectly. Lumine shuffled back from him coyly, letting his skirts further unwind. The fabric fell between his legs again, only outlining his long legs better.

"Well then I invite you to make a fuss about my Nothing. Go ahead and disturb my emptiness," Lumine purred, making jokes on the Japanese translation of Much Ado About Nothing. The two fingers framing his crotch made the meaning crystal clear to anyone indisposed to interlinguistic literary humour, like Bass.

"With my fingers or my tongue?" Bass offered, sharp teeth dripping with anticipatory drool.

"Oh no, you'll have to find it first." Lumine arched his thin back against the stone wall, then slowly crossed his cloak over his previously exposed body. Bass took the bait.

Quickly finding the centre of Lumine's folds —and oh what a double entendre that was to Bass' racing brain— Bass worked the long skirts up over his arms metre by metre. He was halfway to victory when his eager fingers finally grasped around Lumine's ankles which laid slim outside of their armour. These ankles kicked quite powerlessly in mock protest, enough to arouse Bass' subroutines that bade him clutch harder to keep his prize. The sea of Lumine's dress folded on itself and built up in the crook of Bass' arms. His hands clawed up Lumine's legs with the powerful piercing curve of a raptor's talons. He was blind to what his hands were doing as his eyes remained locked on Lumine's rapture.

Crashing quietly in one gasping breath, Lumine's back hit the floor and his bare hips emerged from the cream foam of his vestments. His hands were limp, fingers curled over palms by his earcones. His thighs and the nothing between his legs quivered in expectation. His eyes burnt low with lust. Paper fragments and pink dusted his cheeks. Bass dragged his unresisting body forward by the ankles until their hips met. Lumine's plating opened. His wetness and heat spilled out. Bass inhaled deeply ; exhaled worshipfully.

Bass opened his upper plating, letting his length extrovert from between the membranes that kept its housing clean of dust. Seeing those thin lips part around the gigantic textured piece of art Bass called a cock made Lumine's own true lower lips clench in envious hunger. He wanted that inside him. But unlike the few times they'd rutted together this way previously under Rock's approving gaze, he wanted it at his own pace. So he braced his shins around Bass' back and angled his hips just the way he wanted. His plush folds pressed into the deeply ridged base of Bass' hardness. Controlling his pace fully, he moved up and down at a pace that just wasn't fair. Bass hissed. 

"Faster. Come on. Those pussy lips are all big for me, aren't they?" Bass rocked his hips, trying to dip more of himself into Lumine's wide wet hold. Lumine cocked a wry smile. His hands crept to Bass' knees.

"Not as engorged as yours get for me, Bass. You know I could suck your puffy, shiny, pleasure-purpled vulva for hours. It's just a shameless dripping display between your legs. Tasting so good, like honey."

Bass stopped moving. His hands at Lumine's hips tensed. "Are you mocking me?"

"No, I am being genuine." Lumine's hands flopped back beside his head and he sighed. "Perhaps I am not meant for erotic expression."

Bass' thumbs rolled over the hip struts below. His brows knitted. "Am I really purple?"

"Why do you think I love your stripes?" Lumine said in a smoky mumble.

Bass stared, comprehending. His cock twitched, hard. Bass grabbed his partner's loose hands and pinned them with fingers intertwined. His smile bared all fangs.

After two unsuccessful pokes, Bass finally barged his way into Lumine's tight passage. In a few hitching strokes, they met hip to hip, Lumine's bulging mound hot against Bass' crotch. Lumine tried breathing normally, but all he could manage were hiccupping gasps and moans when Bass began to move. He rolled his hips and back in a sinuous wave, accompanying the rhythm he intended to set with the powerful ripple of his muscles inside. That ripple drove Rock wild, and as predicted it mesmerised Bass.

Held in thrall, Bass rode the undulating body under him, pushing in time with the milking motions that made him throb and cry out. He could feel the stiff fluid pounding through his cock, and his sensitive skin felt the dancing embrace of the oil and levers that drove Lumine's smooth valve as well. Minuscule fiberoptic nerves peeking out between the slightest of slivers in their equipment delivered messages of pure ecstasy as they were sodden with lubricant and binding mechormones. The pressure plates told the same story, and every temperature sensor, electric discharge well, and mercury-laden movement gague behind the walls of their sex sang out in unison. This most human of motions made the two feel as if they were beyond the mortal world entirely.

Through their connection, subtle radio waves and data packets passed between their sensors to pluck at the programming in their intercourse drivers. It produced a unique sense of feeling one another that neither could fully describe, the robotic oxytocin that drove them to link mouths and seek even more skin on skin, folded around each other and drinking in the sense of the other's delight through every pore. No embrace was enough, no kiss too deep or tender. Their bodies felt about to catch fire with each roll of pistoning hips. Yet somehow the magma kept building inside of them, slowly building in momentum.

Bass pushed in steadily, single-mindedly focusing on filling Lumine with each stroke. Lumine swayed and gyrated his hips as their lovemaking mounted, encouraging his partner to hit newer and deeper spaces that would wonderfully make him gasp and mewl. Bass complied, hands firmly at Lumine's waist as his thrusts bled into bouncing slaps where his penis left almost entirely, and grinding pulls where it filled Lumine to the frothing brim. Their fluids flowed freely, their meeting made loud squelches, ringing slaps of skin, and soft sticky sounds if they juddered just so. Bass had been issuing pre-cum for a while, and it started to dribble out pearly white into the junction of their dark-plated thighs. When he dared to look after Bass broke he kiss to yell an obscenity at the twisting squeeze he'd just performed, Lumine found the sight terribly erotic.

When Bass looked down, his hips stopped save for one last pump he couldn't help. Two of the nubs at the base of his cock had caught Lumine's lavender bud between them, and that was something he had to jiggle against a few times just to see the reaction. He saw Lumine's inner lips ripple and then the outer ones flexed, trying to suck him back in. That was great, and it felt like a heaven of ten blowjobs. He pressed his thumb to the hard little bit of trapped flesh. Lumine breathed in hard. He turned his thumb. Lumine's valve went crazy from its entrance back to its very depths, sucking and kissing at Bass' tip. That was amazing, so Bass turned his thumb again.

He faintly heard Lumine say "No," then when he adjusted his hips upward to get a better footing, that thing that blew his mind happened. Not just the full-length spasm, harder than ever and feeling like wet butterfly kisses at his tip and then one good solid clench that made him wince. The thing after that, when Lumine clenched a second time : his visible eye slimmed and got wet, blurring the fiery iris like a sunset, his mouth formed the tiniest little smiling o, and he said, Bass was sure of it this time, "Oopf." On this second viewing, Bass realised that was the goblin's O-face. And he wondered why he'd never noticed before.

Bass looked back down at where their bodies joined. Lumine's thighs were shaking just a bit after his full body shudder had died down, and his little bud was starting to recede. Bass gave it a goodbye flick. Lumine made the garbled noise of a machine still asleep. Maybe feeling a bit sorry, Bass petted the pussy on his lefthand side. It was a pussy he liked, after all. But above that...

"Why isn't yours out?" Bass asked, looking at the slit from which Lumine's length should have appeared.

"Mmm nn?" Lumine rolled his hips while simply stretching his whole body luxuriously. It took a few contented seconds for his memory-replay to mesh with his language centres. "I just came," he said as a somewhat obvious explanation for his lack of erection.

"It wasn't out before either."

"Mine stays in unless I let it out. No reason to when you're making me feel so good from the inside. We new generation reploids—"

"Got it." Bass punched forward with his hips, hoping to shut Lumine up before he could start on another superiority spiel. Lumine yelped and then slapped Bass' ribcage, but he was smiling, and tightened his legs. Bass asked, "You okay with having all that cloth in your face?"

Lumine briefly considered the yards of fabric scrunched up over his chest. "I'm fine. Please continue. I apologise for my lack of a phallus spoiling the mood."

"Nah, it's okay." Bass pulled out. "You finish early."

"I do not!"

"That's twice now. I think ya do."

Lumine sat up and then pushed his skirts back down over his legs in one tight-fisted fell swoop. The green peridot window behind him enhanced the power of his pout. Bass laughed, then whistled.

"C'mon, turn around," Bass ordered.

"I beg your pardon." Lumine didn't budge an inch.

"You had a lotta fun the first round, so let me work the magic again for round two. I wanna see you pushed up against that glass, all ten miles of skirt hiked up over your butt." Bass painted a convincing picture.

Lumine slowly turned around, keeping his head in once place like an owl. He lifted his skirts again, tucked his silver-painted cape over to his front by the left side, and then folded it all over the top of his carefully presented buttocks. He was still dripping from his orgasm and Bass' pre-cum. One hand rose to touch the swirling cames leading the thin window's irregular panes. His hand was hot on the cold glass, blooming white around his tender touch. His head turned submissively to the left where the crystal olivine caught his profile in eerie oily circles. His ruined fan of hair splashed out onto the gold-lined green leaf pattern of the baroque velvet wallpaper. His embroidered cuffs and jumper straps fell like jewels off his thin arms, their sleeves torn from his struggle. The sumptuousness of the deeply verdant destroyed room fit his fallen state like on sugar on devils-food.

Bass rushed forward with a pit-deep growl. His hands grabbed Lumine's waist, his mouth the reploid's neck. Pointed teeth dug as well they could into the delicate plates and tubes of Lumine's neck, and the director found himself unable to resist with more than a moan. Bass' erection dug into him and he screamed.

Rutted into his window, Lumine shouted and shook, body taking the full force of Bass' assault from behind. His pussy was unbelievably tight and his body felt weightless while Bass lifted it with hips alone. Bass' hands moved from waist to chest, clutching and tearing at the sarafan and cape while he thrust and yelled into the abused shoulder under his thirty roaming fangs.

Lumine whimpered. That turned Bass on more. He licked an aubergine earcone and chuckled before briefly slowing his pace for a few good jerks upward.

"No..." Lumine's voice was soft and gravelly, much like the words he'd used to seduce Bass earlier. Bass remembered the "no" before Lumine had come earlier, and so picked up his pace while feeling proud of himself. "No," Lumine repeated. Bass moved faster and reached down to rub at Lumine's slit. If he could get him to come a second time... "Bass, it hurts. Bass!"

There was a blinding light. There was the sound of splintering wood, shattered glass, and screeching bent metal. Bass felt himself fall forward, which was not a good feeling to get after pressing someone up against a window, and then he felt the wind whistling through his hair, which was an even worse feeling to get after pressing someone up against a window. Bass looked down at hundreds of feet of nothingness between him and moon rock, realised the air rushing by was decompressing from the tower, and held on with his dick for dear life. Lumine grunted below him. He looked down to see new claws on Lumine's hands set deep into the stone of the tower. Those new arms flexed, the pair started to swing backward, and that's when Bass noticed the weird flat arms moving under him. In just a tiny bit of justified panic, he looked to the side to see gigantic wings also pushing from where they were fully trapped inside the tiny library.

Well shit. Second form triggered.

As the conjoined pair backed up, more books fell to the floor, a few making it past the wings and out the window. Quickly as he could, Lumine turned to the side and fluffed up his right wing's feathers so that the thankfully tiny entrance to the room became completely blocked. The decompression ceased. Lumine sighed in relief, but it made no sound. Bass was still awkwardly lodged in him, and at semi-chub.

"Are you okay?" Bass sent over radio. There was a very long pause. Bass pulled out. There was another pause before Lumine responded.

"Am I okay? Of course. Now that you've defeated my vagina, I suppose you're satisfied. Bass, you're an idiot."

"I didn't mean for that to happen. I thought you were getting ready to come!"

"When I said no I meant..." Lumine's helmeted forehead hit a destroyed shelf. His left wings drooped. "If you'd slowed down, it would have been fine."

"I didn't think I was hurting you."

"I was a bit sore. You just needed to be gentler. A high task for you, I know. But I assumed it within your ability."

"So you're never screwing me again," Bass ventured. Lumine's foot tapped twice.

"Bass, enter my wings."

"I knew it was too good to be true," Bass complained, backing up into the wings that sealed the damaged entranceway.

"Squeeze Bomb." Lumine aimed his palm at the gaping wound that was once a window. Gravity Antonion's sealing solvent covered the hole. Bass had no choice but to be muscled out of the room and into the tiny maintenance hallway outside. Lumine sealed the hall entrance next. Then he drew his wings in tight around himself as a seraph and finally turned to Bass, looking upset.

Air was flowing through the hallway loudly. The respiration system was working hard to re-pressurise the area. Bass spoke.

"Look, I'm sorry."

"I am sure you are," Lumine responded.

"Tch, I mean it! Dammit."

"Again, I'm sure you do. Promise you'll never do it again."

Bass considered this. Lumine did not look ready to attack, and he wasn't being as caustic as would be expected.

"You're not mad?"

"I am livid," Lumine clarified calmly. "And you are still slightly aroused."

Bass wasn't quite sure what words to use so he gurgled at the back of his throat and spread his hands helplessly while giving Lumine the wall-eye. Lumine smiled, showing his serrated teeth.

"Tomorrow, you are going to find every speck of my collection that escaped. Otherwise, Rock hears about what happens. Obey, and it remains between us. Is that... okay?"

"Yyyyeah," Bass agreed warily.

"Let us return to our bedroom." Lumine turned and began walking to the stairs.

"Maybe I should start finding the junk outside?" Bass suggested, pointing in the opposite direction. Lumine looked 180 degrees over his shoulder and chuckled.

"Why would you want to do that? I want to have sex with you."

Bass' gurgle returned. Lumine floated and Bass followed. His brain wasn't quite ready to process this, but he also wasn't going to object to the situation. Halfway up the stairs, his thoughts finally caught up with him.

"I really thought you were into it," Bass protested. The amethyst and gold shield on Lumine's back paused in the bright sliver of the stairwell's mediaeval window.

"I was. You don't need to push the matter. I was enjoying myself." The light slid off of the green hexagon when Lumine slid into the darkness between the next shot of light. His wings gave off only a faint golden glow.

"Yeah so you're making this all seem like my fault."

"Do you expect me to apologise? It was a misunderstanding. When we return to the bed, I will lay out some ground rules." Lumine allowed no further discussion as he rounded the inner curve of the stairwell. They couldn't reach the bedroom fast enough for Bass.

The moment Bass' feet met the ultramarine carpet of Lumine's quarters, he ran past the delicate arches and fractal amethysts into the bedroom. Bass threw himself onto the carefully made bed, yelled indistinctly, and spread himself out fully. Lumine took petite steps into the room after him, legs restrained by the graceful binding on his own wings. Lumine stood at the end of the bed, looking amusedly down at Bass below.

"You seem eager already. Or have you smelled Rock again?"

"Maybe a bit of both if I'm not in trouble?" Bass crossed his arms behind his head and brought the soles of his feet together while spreading his thighs wide. His half-chub had returned along with his confidence.

"You're not." Lumine smiled and tilted his head. His green halo sparkled from the fairy lights in the minibar behind him. "Would you like to hear our rules?"

"Our?"

"We may need a 'safe word.' The use of the word is to indicate the other partner to cease activity, without the ambiguities of more common phrases."

"Rock usually just says stop."

"That's because you listen when he says that. And because he often keeps his pains to himself so as not to disturb you. I require more stringent assurances. What word can I say to make you stop if I'm uncomfortable?"

"What about just 'stop'?" Bass was getting a bit fed up with all the complications.

"Suboptimal. But we can use that word if you'll respect it."

"I'm not a monster! ...not completely." Bass sniffed and turned his body away.

Lumine undid his lower wings so he could sit on the bed, claws supporting his leaning weight. "I understand. It's agreed then. When I say stop, you'll stop."

"Only in bed," Bass corrected, looking back over his crossed forearms and dusky curved spine. His erection popped into view just over his hip. Lumine chuckled.

"I couldn't hope to stop you outside of it." Lumine leant over Bass for a kiss.

Gold feathers pressed into Bass' back, bathing his grey plating in tickling kisses. The more he sank into the softly shifting mass, all while gnawing at Lumine's lips above, the more at ease he felt. He usually felt skittish around Lumine's second form, even when watching Rock enjoy angel rides and angel "rides" —annoyingly with the same kind of innocent joy for each activity— but now that he felt in control of the situation and there was no Rock to make him jealous... There was nothing to be afraid of, and Lumine wasn't that creepy. Feeling the warm wings encircle him felt less like a trap than the invitation to soul-deep embrace.

The red jewel piercing Lumine's chest finally began to poke at Bass' back when the director tried to get more comfortable in the kiss. Bass shimmied his shoulders and kicked his legs to push Lumine out of their kiss.

"Your chest's annoying," Bass said. The wings swept away from his body, back to their exaggerated perch directly behind Lumine.

"This is one position that's impossible in this state," Lumine admitted. "Luckily, there are others. Would you like me from back or front?"

"We're not gonna fight over who gets to be the dick?"

"That would be you, my dear nuisance."

"Hey, you give me a run for my money." Bass rolled onto his back, sat up, then wiggled his black eyebrows suggestively. "Both ways, y'know whadda mean."

Lumine giggled again. His rising shoulders shook loose feathers of light that melted on their bodies and the bed. "I am glad you enjoyed this morning. Now : front or back?"

"Will you turn into this thing every time I screw you from behind?"

"If I did, Rock would have filled our rooms with feathers by now," Lumine teased.

"He likes it missionary and you know it." Bass unfolded his legs with a sly smile, relaxing. His erection bobbed in the air, but not yet painfully.

"He likes to see our faces. Position is delightfully variable. He also likes those little nibbles behind his ear." Lumine lay accumbent, facing his husband.

"He sure does." Bass began pumping his dick lazily, mulling over the body presented to him like one of those fabled French girls. "Okay, if you lean the red thing over the edge of the bed, can I take you from behind again?"

"That's a lot of work," Lumine scoffed, imagining how he'd have to support himself on locked-elbow arms to keep from sliding off with each thrust. And what to do with his thighs? "We could just do it doggy style."

"Hey, who's calling the shots?"

"We both are."

"Myemyothmyar..." Bass mocked Lumine's voice in a reedy tone. Still, he rethought his plan. Letting go of his erection, he crawled over to Lumine. The advanced reploid was nearly basking in the blue-white glow of the window wall behind him. Bass took a hold of Lumine's left thigh which lay on top. He lifted the golden thigh up, bending it fully and then tucking its protruding lavender knee behind the startled reploid's armpit into the shield the housed the source of Lumine's wing-arms. "What if we put this up here, and then we've got a clear shot."

"That's novel," Lumine said, impressed. He was still turned on his side, split wings stopping him from falling backward. "Can you fit?"

"It'll be tight," Bass said as if there were no problem at all. He was too busy pushing Lumine's left wings fully out of his way while the right ones fluttered and twitched impatiently.

To prove his position's promise, he got on his own side, then shuffled closer to his partner. He lifted his legs over Lumine's right thigh, and then their hips fit together. Bass put his right arm around the red chest jewel to use for leverage. This put him right on level with Lumine's blanched face and popped collar. Lumine's left foot took the chance to settle around Bass' waist. His left claws rested on Bass' back. The remnants of Lumine's rich clothing tangled around them.

"I suppose this will work. Go ahead," Lumine acceded.

"I'm not gonna trigger a third form?"

"I only wish. Be gentle and slow. We will have..." Lumine leant his head forward to touch their noses. "...a wonderful time."

Bass slipped inside halfway, finding Lumine moist and welcoming. The reploid's dark walls pulled him in further. Bass made sure to move slowly, letting Lumine's passage taste every knob and whorl of his erection. Moving this slow, he could feel the rips of his underside catch against the miniscule plates that could at a moment's notice clench or simply slide like silk along him. He wouldn't lie: Lumine felt good. In fact, the pussy felt the same as when he'd been in it earlier, which really shouldn't have surprised him. It's not like taking a second form would have changed the reploid's internal structure. More slickness joined their arousal. Bass chuckled: the goblin was finally getting really turned on.

"You feel great, Broom Goblin," Bass said while ever so slightly picking up the pace. Lumine moaned and panted before swatting his back. Bass took the admonishment with pride. "Who let your pussy be so tight?"

"Noah Corporation," Lumine quipped breathily while his voice wobbled from their shifting bodies. He squeezed Bass' massive cock and closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation. Bass pushed his hips harder on purpose, growling and laughing from the pit of his stomach.

"You're great. So hot. Feel like weaponised velvet."

Lumine's answer was reduced to moaning.

As they moved faster, the sex got even wetter. Bass wouldn't have minded, except that his arm was beginning to slip on Lumine's red crystal, and balancing on it was uncomfortable in the first place. And he wasn't getting deep at all into his partner, and he couldn't even touch the guy's clit, or hell his own, since he had to hold on and...

"Hey. Get. On your back," Bass suggested between thrusts.

"Fine, get out fir-r-rst." Lumine's wings all shuffled at once, extricating himself from Bass immediately in a confusing flurry of feather and metal.

"Hey, you changed position still inside of me this morning!" Bass breathed heavily, but kept his head while lobbing the complaint.

Lumine was on his hands and knees, ruffling his wings out of their half-asleep funk. He looked over his collar with amusement.

"Take this as a compliment: your penis and mine are of two completely different calibres." Lumine sat on his haunches before lowering himself with the aid of his lower plate wings for support and the upper plates pushing against the bed's headboard. Finally, he lay on his back, red crystal pointing toward the sky prouder than any phallus in the room.

"Damn, what is that thing even for?" Bass settled over Lumine's hips, but had to keep his chest up with his arms to avoid crashing into the crystal.

"It is my power crystal, extended. There's nothing I can do about it in this form."

"Actually, you know, I wondered about that? Isn't your hexagon JO-crystal blue?"

"My JO—?!" Lumine stopped himself. After all, even Rock found that joke of Bass' funny. It would be hypocritical of him to act offended when he'd giggled and gladly let Rock "rub the JO-crystal with a bro" in private before. "The smaller green crystals are made of alexandrite. In this form, they exit my body and form a sheath to protect my core. Because of the incandescent light from my wings, the alexandrite turns red."

"The more you know, huh." Bass put his hands on either side of the crystal. "It's in the way though. I wanna see your face."

"Rock's rubbing off on you."

"No. I have a theory about you I want to test."

"Care to let me in on it?"

"Nope." Bass slapped at the crystal. "Guh it's so big."

"I could say the same thing." Lumine trailed his right foot up Bass' side. His implication was clear and Bass' cock was ready. "Are you sure you don't want me to ride cowboy?"

"No, I want you under me. You look good when you're spread out all over the bed. Like a cake I can screw. Too sweet." Spreading Lumine's thighs up over his own, Bass slipped back in. The friction was slick yet immense. This was heaven.

Their pleasure grew again. Lumine's wings fluttered like his labia at each brush to his sweet spot. He felt weak yet strong while Bass filled him, and the angle let Bass push into his very depths, and then surpass them. Vagina stretching from Bass' strong yet slow strokes, Lumine felt himself sink into pure sensation. All around them, his growing wings glowed.

Unable to throw his head back normally because of the fluted helmet, Lumine's head rocked in one place, its fin jammed between the headboard and his right shoulder. His white face was lax and panting onto his right shoulder, tongue peeking out from exertion. Bass devoured the image as he leaned over the side of Lumine's red protuberance. He felt incredibly powerful while he brought the reploid pleasure, knowing it was all from him, and for him. Lumine was whimpering his name, Bass, not Rock. Not anyone else. Those flame-coloured eyes were doused behind long black-rimmed lashes for no one else. His pussy was stretched wide and trembling for Bass and Bass alone. Lumine was bucking, shuddering, swallowing screams. The arms of his wings slid with scissor sounds behind his back, and his writhing chest couldn't be stilled. Bass moved stronger, legs straining and cock crying out for lack of release. He had to deny himself. He could stretch Lumine more. He could bring this angel to its breaking point.

Lumine's eyes fluttered open, gazing at a patch of nothingness, then they squeezed shut. His lips formed a tight line, and his hips bucked harder. Bass could feel it coming. The older robot ran his fingertips around the slit housing Lumine's second equipment. His fingers dipped in and found the tender weeping head within. The membranes trying to keep the housing closed protested at his touch, and he could tell the additional unexpected stretch was driving Lumine wild. Softly, Bass tugged on the head. The member rose wet and soft into his hand. Bass pressed all his weight down through Lumine's red chest crystal, pinning the bot in place. His right hand worked Lumine's length in time with their shared thrusts. Bass fixed his gaze on Lumine's face, unwilling to look away for even a moment as he moved faster and bode that blissful expression return.

"Oopf," Lumine's happy kiss-pursed lips said under sealed eyes. His changed colours in the second form didn't change a thing about that face. It was still exquisite, delicate, and sculpted by love. Bass stopped moving, frozen by the reploid before him. That's what he'd been waiting for.

Lumine's orange eyes came back online with a light happy murmur. He tightened his legs around Bass' waist and rolled their hips together once. He managed to actually life his long helmeted head from the silver comforter, and wedged it in the junction of mattress to headboard so he could look bemusedly up at his partner.

"I could take a picture of you," he crooned. "I haven't seen that look since Quint slept with you."

Bass shook his head, back hair flying everywhere to cover his shame at getting caught staring. When he stopped, his red eyes were wide and wild, but not angry.

"Yeah, cause you're not bad," Bass barked.

"Oh?"

"You looked... shit, how do I say this?" Bass sat back. His rod pulled halfway out of Lumine. He ran his left hand down his purple streaks, wiping off moisture and moon dust in its wake. He looked back down at Lumine. Somehow the Moon Goblin had a ghost of that orgasmic look on his face, eyes opened innocently but mouth quirked ready to make his damnable little noise. There was only one word for it. "You look beautiful when you come."

Actual red rose on Lumine's cheeks. He wanted to turn his head away, but his helmet fins stuck in the headboard. His hips shifted to the right and his feathers shook a bit, then rose all up around his shoulders.

"Thank you."

"And you make this noise when you come, 'oopf'." Bass tried to mimic the sound, but his vocal range wasn't cut out for it.

"I can't go oopf when I climax. No one goes oopf." Lumine's voice stayed low in snide disbelief.

"You do. Just higher, higher!" Bass rubbed Lumine's red crystal as if it would help.

"Oopf?"

"Higher!"

"Bass, unless you'll only climax if I say it right, we should get back to business!" Lumine broke into laughter that shook his body right down to where his vagina sheathed Bass' cock. Bass found the logic compelling.

He found the laugh beautiful too, even if he'd never, ever say it. Mostly because he thought it made him sound crazy to himself.

"Mind if I speed up?" Bass asked.

"Go nuts," Lumine encouraged. "...as you'd say."

"Don't mind if I do, as you'd say." Bass happily resumed thrusting.

"I wouldn't," Lumine corrected. His eyes rolled sarcastically, but his hips with enthusiasm.

"Damn, you're wetter than the Pacific..." Bass ran out of things to say after that when his cock got well reacquainted with Lumine's tender pussy. It was a bit rough, and Bass' strokes came blindingly fast, and the grey-plated bot couldn't keep his head from hanging back in ecstasy. All the better for him to shout at the perfect sensation that shot into him from below.

The bed creaked unhappily beneath them, then rattled from the pace of Bass' powerful thrusts that just wouldn't stop. In truth it was only about two minutes, but Bass never looked a good lay in the mouth. What came before was what mattered, because he'd won. The orgasm was the cherry on top.

Bass' overload reset his sensory circuits. Everything felt refreshingly new and pure when he lifted himself off of Lumine's right side and got a gander at the pretty face ogling him from deep within its usual uncanny valley. Still, there was something comforting about being creeped out by Lumine; it meant he hadn't changed. The room had changed though. Mostly because the only reason he could see Lumine at all was the glow from the feathers his wings had left behind. In the dark room, Bass was back to being flaccid, and Lumine was back to being less than an angelic being.

"Why is it dark?" Bass groaned, almost afraid to ask.

"Paradise Lost," Lumine answered.

Bass tucked in his member and then fell face first onto the bed. He wasn't dealing with this. "Dammit, Goblin."

"Do you want to know why?"

"I don't care about your bodily functions, Goblin," Bass warned.

Lumine leant down to whisper into his ear, high and sweet, "Oopf." Cackling and kicking his legs, he rolled back to his side of the bed. Bass groaned very loudly in response, shoulder jumping in the need to punch something. Lumine stumbled off the bed and tripped all over his ruined dress on the way to the bar, laughing at himself and swaying his hips.

Bass heard a reusable glass e-can fill, then a second. The weight of a full glass settled next to his forehead. The weight of a damn Moon Goblin settled by his waist. "We climaxed simultaneously," Lumine said sweetly.

"Good for you," Bass said into the comforter. Lumine patted his butt.

"It'll be over in a few minutes. It's not the end of the world. You can tell Rock that you survived my final attack."

Bass' head turned out of the covers, brows drawn down. "You used it?"

"I don't have a choice once it's activated." Lumine took a drink from his own shining grue glass, then pushed Bass' intended drink nearer the bot's nose. "Perhaps you truly are the strongest being in the world, having survived Paradise lost while lodged deep inside me. We can commission a plaque."

It took second for the joke to sink in. "The construction crew already hates me."

"Then we shall have to keep it between the three of us."

"I thought you said you weren't going to tell Rock about what we did!" Bass shot to his feet on the bed. The E-can would have spilled if Lumine hadn't saved it, now sitting side-saddle with two drinks.

"I won't tell him about how my library was ruined. I gave my word. But I think he'd like to know that we've come to an understanding. You know all he wants is for us to love each another."

"Are we there yet?" Bass stepped off the bed into a pile of feathers, then grabbed his drink from Lumine's hand.

"I think we're on the road." Lumine shifted to face Bass. The darkness over the windows began to lift. They both took a drink. "You're not so bad, Earth Goblin."


End file.
